


Laundry List

by thirty2flavors



Category: Borderlands (Video Games), Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Light Angst, Nightmares, Post-Canon, shippiness is probably in the eye of the beholder on this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 07:16:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14255760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thirty2flavors/pseuds/thirty2flavors
Summary: “I am not spending the night in a dark alien cave. That’s got to be, like, easily one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard, and as you may recall, I used to have Handsome Jack in my head.”After entering the Vault of the Traveler, Rhys and Fiona find themselves alone on an alien planet.





	Laundry List

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Valoscope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valoscope/gifts).



> Happy birthday (month) to Valoscope, who was the first friend I made in this scary new fandom about a year ago and who might even love Fiona more than I do.

“I am _not_ spending the night in a dark alien cave. That’s got to be, like, easily one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard, and as you may recall, I used to have Handsome Jack in my head.”

Fiona glared as she straightened out of her crouch, hands resting stubbornly on her hips. “Got any better ones, then, genius?”

“Uh, yeah, sure, how about… literally anything besides that?” Rhys’ cybernetics, which had uselessly failed to find a signal ever since they’d arrived, at least allowed Fiona to see his derisive gesturing and expression even in the low evening light. “Do you know what kind of horrible stuff lives in caves?”

Fiona’s eyes narrowed. “ _I_ grew up in a cave.”

Rhys crossed his arms and tilted his head back, wearing his sleaziest car salesman smile. “Like I said.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Fine.” Throwing her hands in the air, Fiona moved towards the mouth of the cave. “Sleep out here by yourself, alone, unarmed, exposed to all the alien monsters and acid rain—”

“Acid rain?” Rhys yelped, sounding considerably less smug than a second earlier. “You don’t really think—?! Oh, God.” Metal fingers pinching the bridge of his nose, he gave his head a shake. “Just when I’m getting used to _one_ deadly planet, I have to open a stupid Vault and touch a magic box and end up on a _different_ deadly planet—”

“You coming in the cave or not?” interrupted Fiona, eager to stave off what would be his dozenth anxious ramble since their arrival hours ago.

Rhys let his hand fall away with a theatrical sigh, looking from Fiona to the mouth of the cave and back again. Then he sighed again, even louder, head thrown back for extra emphasis. “Fine.”

Fiona smirked, hand on her hip. “Good.”

And then they stared at each other.

“After you,” said Fiona, beckoning to the mouth of the cave. “You’re the one with the flashlight hardwired into your body.”

Rhys shone his palm light so brightly in her face she couldn’t see his scowl.

——

“We should sleep in shifts,” said Rhys.

Fiona’s groan echoed off the walls of the small cave. “We’re not sleeping in shifts. That’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid, it’s pragmatic, one of us can—”

“What? Sit around for hours, staring into space?”

The brim of her hat scraped a stalactite and she ducked her head; Rhys cursed as he stooped in front of her, bent virtually in half as he crept toward the widest, smoothest part of the cave.

“It’s a waste of time,” Fiona continued. “You wait twice as long, or get half as much sleep. Besides, we haven’t seen a damn thing to watch out for.”

“Yet,” huffed Rhys indignantly. He plopped down on the dusty cave floor anyway, holding his lit-up palm aloft. “You know, it’s probably not a _good_ thing we haven’t seen any weird aliens around.”

Fiona rolled her eyes as she sat across from him. “So now you _want_ scary monsters?”

“No, it’s just, I mean, where is everything? Is there life on this planet or what?”

“Sure there is.” A pebble jabbed Fiona’s spine as she stretched out. She swiped it away with a grumble and tipped her hat over her eyes. “We saw those berry things—”

“We don’t know that those were berries. And if they were, who’s eating them? Why haven’t we seen—”

“Will you just shut up and get some sleep? I’m tired.” She lobbed the pebble at him blindly and smirked when he yelped. “There’ll be plenty of time to go over your laundry list of worries in the morning.”

The silence that followed wasn’t tense so much as it was grumpy. She heard Rhys sigh, then lay down on the other side of the clearing.

——

It was pitch black in the cave without the light from Rhys’ arm.

Fiona scrubbed her eyes, though there was no difference between having them open or closed. Her shirt was cold and damp against her skin, her stomach unsettled. The darkness was claustrophobic, and her instinct to leave and get some fresh air conflicted with the reality she’d hurt herself trying. She wondered how much time had passed, if they’d had an acceptable level of sleep yet.

“Shit,” she muttered.

Pushing herself into a sitting position, she hung her head between her knees and focused on the only sound she could hear aside from her own jackhammer heartbeat: Rhys’ quiet almost-snore.

Fiona matched her breathing to his. _In, out._ She bit down on her lip, trying to block out all the thoughts stalking around the periphery of her consciousness like hungry predators. In, out. Eventually, she knew, the tide of adrenaline would pass; it was just a matter of riding the wave until then.

_In, out._

She didn’t much like that part. Eyes squeezed tight (not that it mattered), she wrapped her arms around her knees. _In, out._

“Fiona?”

Fiona flinched, her sprinting heartbeat stumbling. Singularly focused on her own breathing, she’d failed to notice the duet had become a solo. She froze as she was, hidden by the dark. Maybe she could pretend to be asleep.

“I know you’re awake,” said Rhys, like he’d read her mind. “I can see you.”

“What? How—” She turned her head to see his singular golden eye lit up against the pitch black. “Okay, Cyclops, do you mind? That’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Sorry,” he said, sheepish in his drowsiness. “What’s going on? Why are you awake?”

He lit up his palm, too, and Fiona hissed and recoiled as her pupils dilated. “Nothing, I was just…” She shrugged, staring toward the mouth of the cave and doing her best to look casual. “Keeping watch.”

“What? But you said—”

“I know—”

“It’s a waste of time to—”

“I know, but I—saw something—”

“You _saw_ something? In the dark?”

“Heard something, I mean, and—”

“Heard something? Heard what?” Rhys scrambled into a sitting position, shining the light from his palm all around the cave. “You think there’s something in here with us?”

Fiona rubbed her temple. “It’s—it’s fine, probably, okay, just… just go back to sleep.”

“I’m not going back to sleep if there’s some kind of mystery creature in here waiting to devour us—”

“There’s no mystery creature—”

“What did it sound like? Did it sound… big?”

“Oh my god,” Fiona groaned, throwing her head back. “I imagined it, okay? There’s nothing. It’s fine. You’re fine. Just… go back to sleep.”

For a short, blessed moment, Rhys was quiet and still. Fiona could feel the weight of his stare even as she adamantly refused eye contact.

“Fiona,” said Rhys, “did you…” He paused; Fiona set her jaw in anticipation of the rest of the sentence. “...have a bad dream?”

She scoffed, straightening her shoulders and crossing her arms over her chest. “I’m not a child.”

From the corner of her eye, she saw him frown. “I never said you were.”

With the panic dissipated from his voice, what was left behind was infuriatingly… soft. Fiona pressed her lips together, staring intently at the shadows of the stalactites on the cave wall. Rhys budged up closer to her, dimming the light from his hand to something a little less blinding.

“Hey,” he tried again, gently. “Fi. What’s up?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” She’d meant for it to be casual, dismissive, but a tightness in her throat made it sound choked. Her short fingernails bit into the palms of her hands as she balled her fists. “I’m worried. I… had a dream.” She sniffed and shrugged. “About Sasha.”

“Sasha?” Rhys said her name the way he always did, like he was trying to pretend it wasn’t already on the tip of his tongue. “I don’t really think you have to worry about Sasha. I mean, she’s with everyone else on a… okay, Pandora’s not a _normal_ planet, exactly, but it’s, y’know, inhabited.” As pep talks went, it wasn’t his best. He sent Fiona an encouraging smile anyway. “I’m sure she’s fine. Besides, she can take care of herself.”

“Take care of herself?” Fiona rounded on him. “She _blew herself up_ twelve hours ago.”

Rhys’ eyes widened and then looked away. “Oh. Yeah. That… was pretty horrible.”

“Oh. Yeah. _That_ ,” she mocked. But when he flinched she felt a pang of guilt, remembering his shameless blubbering while she’d been too stuck on panic to do much of anything. She swallowed. “God. If she didn’t ask for that damn watch—if I didn’t have it on me—Felix didn’t even tell us what it _did_ , I could’ve thrown it out or—or sold it, and—”

“But you didn’t,” Rhys interrupted, raising his left hand to stem the flood of her words. “You didn’t, and you had it when she needed it, and she’s okay. Fiona, she’s fine.”

“She—she was dying, you know? Actually dying, right there in front of me. I see it when I close my eyes.” Fiona shook her head, scrubbing at her face as though she could erase the image from her brain. “Do you know how many times I…?”

“Fiona,” he said, and she realized that at some point he’d crept closer.

“I should’ve stopped her. I’m supposed to look after her. And now—now we’re here, wherever the hell here is, in some dark creepy cave, and I’ve got to figure out how to get us back, and—”

“Whoa, okay, Fiona—”

“I’m so tired,” she admitted, slumping, elbows on her knees. “It’s been such a long day. Week. Thirty years.” Her laugh bordered closer to hysteria than she was willing to admit. “God, I want a drink. I want a single-malt scotch that’s older than I am. I want a king size bed, and a feather pillow plucked from angel wings, and a pool of money to swim in, and a beautiful woman serving me food on a silver tray, and somewhere I can put my stupid, suicidal sister where she won’t get hurt, and I want…”

“A hug?” suggested Rhys.

Fiona shot him a withering stare as he held out his arms. “Don’t be a smartass.”

“I wasn’t,” he said earnestly. “I don’t have any of that other stuff. Kinda my best offer right now, unless I can interest you in a cool rock, or a round of Minesweeper.” The light projecting from his palm switched briefly to some sort of grid display, and then his smile turned to a grin. The middle and index fingers on both hands beckoned her forward. “C’mon, Fi. Don’t let the cheekbones scare you, I’m much cuddlier than I look, I promise.”

“You’re obnoxious, is what you are,” she insisted.

Hugs were not Fiona’s thing. She wasn’t a touchy-feely person. Hugs were for dire circumstances and near-death experiences. She wasn’t a kid.

Rhys didn’t lower his arms. He just sat there with that dumb, earnest look on his face, illuminated by his own built-in light source.

Fiona stared at him, starting to shake her head—and then she lurched forward, wrapping herself in the hug anyway.

Her grip was stronger than intended; Rhys squeaked like a chew toy before he responded in kind, pulling her close. The cave was dark with both his hands flat against her back, but Fiona’s face was already hidden in his shoulder, so it didn’t matter. She shut her eyes and let out one long, shuddering breath.

“It’s gonna be okay, Fi.” One of his hands—the metal one, judging from the weight of it—rubbed the space between her shoulder blades. “We’re gonna figure out where we are, and we’re gonna figure out how to get back, and then we’re gonna buy, like, three hundred of those stopwatches, just in case.”

Fiona snorted.

“I’m serious,” Rhys continued. “Atlas’ll manufacture them. We’ll make a killing. We’ll run Anshin out of business.” He paused. “Do you think—”

“Rhys,” she said warningly.

“Sorry.” He cleared his throat. “Look, the point is: it’s gonna be fine. We’ve gotten out of tighter spots. Or, at least, y’know, equally tight ones. No one’s pointed a gun at us or tied us up with duct tape in hours. We’re golden.”

They were nice words, but something in them caught in Fiona’s throat, making her chest constrict and her face burn. She felt a rush of gratitude for the darkness of the cave, and the fact that her face was obscured from view.

“Rhys, I don’t…” She paused to steady her voice and gather her courage. “I don’t know what to do next.”

Rhys was quiet a moment, though he gave her a squeeze.

“Not sure,” he admitted. “But it probably starts with getting some sleep.”

Fiona nodded. Her errant heartbeat had finally slowed to an acceptable speed, approximating the one she could hear in his chest. Exhaustion was already rushing in to fill the space left behind by adrenaline.

“Tell anyone about this and I’ll kill you,” she muttered, threat muffled by his tacky black jacket.

“Too late. I livestreamed the whole thing.”

“Shut up.”

“All over the EchoNet. It’s a real hit. I’m calling it _The Softer Side of Vault Hunting_.”

Fiona pulled back and jabbed an elbow in the vicinity of his ribcage. Rhys yelped.

“Ungrateful,” he accused, rubbing his side.

Fiona shrugged innocently. As Rhys’ scowl turned into a smile, she smiled back—or she would have, were it not eclipsed by a yawn.

“We really should get some more sleep,” said Rhys, when he was done yawning in sympathy. “There’ll be plenty of time for your laundry list of worries in the morning.”

Fiona was too tired to put any malice into her glare, so she settled on nodding. “Yeah, probably.” She stretched, rolling her neck and cracking her back before she laid down again, curling onto her side. “Who knows. Maybe tomorrow we’ll find a ton of money and a spaceship.”

“That’s the spirit.” He settled down next to her, close enough that she could feel his back against hers, though she didn’t mind. “So…” His tone turned mischievous. “You prefer to be the big spoon or little spoon?”

She made a noise of disgust in the back of her throat. “I will rip that glorified laser pointer out of its shoulder socket.”

“If you’re that jealous, I can leave a night light on.”

Fiona kicked her foot backward, bumping her heel against his calf. “Fuck off.”

“You Pandorans. There’s no need for violence. I’m just saying, if, at some point in the night, you get frightened and you’d like some strong, handsome genius to hug it better—”

“I’ll be sure to ask if you know any,” she finished. “Go to sleep, douchebag.”

The light clicked off, plunging the cave into darkness once more, and Fiona let her eyes slip shut. The pitch black didn’t feel so oppressive with the vibration of Rhys’ snicker right behind her.

“You know, Fiona,” said Rhys after a moment, quieter than before, “you don’t have to be the big sister all the time.”

“Yes, I do,” she said, just as quiet. But she smiled as she said it. “You idiots would be screwed without me.”

“Well… yeah. Maybe a little.” He sounded like he was smiling, too. “Sleep tight, Fi.” His voice was warm; Fiona felt like she’d tugged a blanket up to her shoulders. “I’ll see you in the morning.”


End file.
